Thursday, November 12, 2015

Risen 2 Pirate RPG is great fun - but will it shine on consoles?

There are plenty of people, though, who run screaming from all the
Tolkienesque trappings so often found in RPGs, though. If, like them,
you feel nothing but disdain for orcs, goblins and elves, Risen 2: Dark
Waters might reaffirm your faith. It's a conventional RPG, but with a
welcome pirate theme.

In terms of pedigree, it's not exactly Mass Effect: its developer,
Piranha Bytes, is based in Germany, and it will be published by the
small but perfectly formed Deep Silver. The same team brought us the
original Risen in 2009, which didn't prove to be a wholly satisfactory
exercise: Risen was generally acclaimed for its subject matter and
RPG-rigour, at least on the PC, but it suffered badly from a hamfisted,
ugly port to the Xbox 360. Luckily, we've now managed to play through a
couple of bits of Risen 2, on the Xbox 360, so are well placed to assess
it in anticipation of its late-April release.

Drunken pirate fun

Before we got our paws on Risen 2, Deep Silver brand manager Pete
Brolly took us through some of its key aspects - handily, given that
they wouldn't necessarily be obvious when jumping into two segments of
the game. He explained that Risen 2 has a standalone story, which takes
place a year or so after the first game.
Again, you take on the role of a nameless hero, this time tasked with
infiltrating a group of pirates, who appear to constitute the only
section of society equipped with a weapon sufficiently powerful to take
on the Titans, which are threatening mankind. The action spans three
tropical islands, although we only explored one, called Tacarigua. Some
storyline continuity from the first game is provided by Patty, who spent
the first game looking for her father, Captain Steelbeard - both
feature this time around.

Brolly added that there are two factions in the game - Inquisition
and Natives. Both pretty self-explanatory, and you can choose to align
yourself with either. Since you can only learn new skills from
non-player characters, those who want to achieve proficiency with
muskets and the like would be well advised to join the Inquisition,
whereas those interested in exercising Voodoo should check out the
Natives.

That voodoo that you do

Brolly proceeded to demonstrate some of the fun that could be had
with a bit of voodoo. You can, for example, take a hair from a
character, use that to fashion a voodoo doll and then use that to take
control of the character, in order to fulfil quests. Brolly also
demonstrated how to use voodoo to get two nearby enemies - he used the
example of gorillas - to fight each other rather than you.

He then showed a key element of the game: Dirty Tricks. This proved
invaluable in combat: hitting the right bumper brings up a wheel with
various abilities that can be easily triggered, such as an auto-aimed
pistol-shot when you're in the middle of a swordfight.

Each Dirty Trick has a cool-down period before you can trigger
another, and the wheel includes the ability to take a swig of rum, which
restores your health. Another, amusing Dirty Trick is the ability to
unleash a parrot which flies around targeted enemies and distracts them.
You can also send out a monkey kept in your pocket, to scope out areas,
access small spaces and stealthily steal items. If he is killed,
though, you'll have to buy a new one.

Deep Silver has clearly improved the classic RPG side of the game in
comparison with its predecessor: Brolly explained that Risen 2 contains
far more equipment for players to collect, each item of which improves
different attributes, and through the skills you learn from NPCs, you
can specialise, for example in throwing or slashing weapons, or
different types of muskets.

You can also pick crew members - who might specialise in melee
attacks or healing - to accompany you on trickier missions. The
swordfighting has also been rendered much more controllable, with stick
movements determining the direction of your slashing, so it's much
easier to take on multiple enemies in Risen 2 than in the first game.

The hands-on consisted of exploring two areas of Tacarigua, with the
starting points defined by launching pre-saved games. The first put us
in a village occupied by pirates, with our mission being to infiltrate
our way onto Captain Steelbeard's crew by doing the sort of things that
pirates do - that is, drinking, fighting and pillaging.

The first striking aspect of the game that emerged is that it is
definitely shooting for an adult audience, presumably with an 18 or, at a
pinch, 15 rating. That's because it contains some of the finest
swearing we've come across in a game for years - as it should, given
that it's attempting to replicate the experience of being a pirate.
Before picking up a mission from Captain Steelbeard's deputy, Booze, we
went for a wander around the inevitable tavern, where we had fun
conversing with some gloriously flirty and bawdy barmaids. The barmaids
can also teach you conversational persuasion skills.

Eventually, we were assigned to follow one of Steelbeard's crew, who
wandered to a nearby bay for an illicit rendezvous with a Sunken One - a
half-man, half-sea creature, seeking information about Steelbeard and
his crew. After being spotted, a swordfight ensued, and having
dispatched both parties, we returned to the village, to claim some
respect from Steelbeard. But we still had to perform further tasks to
prove our pirate credentials.

A spot of exploring led us to a hilariously deaf old codger who was
also a musket expert. This gave us the chance to investigate the game's
skills-learning mechanic. Once we had managed to communicate to the old
git that we wanted him to teach us how to handle a musket, we were given
the chance to impress him by playing a simple shooting-gallery
mini-game, in which objects like coconuts and bottles were thrown from
the left-hand side of the screen, and we had to hit them in mid-air.
Once we'd done well enough in that, some gold changed hands (in Risen 2,
you invariably have to pay to learn skills), and we could now shoot
muskets. We also bought a musket from the old guy, and could even have
purchased blueprints for building our own guns.

On returning to the village, we had to wrap up a couple more missions
before gaining Steelbeard's acceptance, one of which involved
swordfighting a notably pugnacious pirate (from whom extra swordfighting
skills could be learned) and the other involving stealing some rum.
Finally, Steelbeard was prepared to grant us the status of fully fledged
pirate.

Fraternising with the natives

The second save game took us into the heart of Tacarigua's jungle, on
the trail of a native village which had hooked up with another faction
of pirates said to be in possession of the only weapon which could take
on the Titans. The action started in the company of Patty and Captain
Steelbeard; after dealing with monkeys and assorted jungle wildlife, we
reached a river on the outskirts of the native village, at which point
we were left on our own.

Again, as when we were trying to join Steelbeard's crew, the native
village acted as a hub from which to undertake missions which result in
gaining the natives' trust, as well as that of the one representative of
the other pirate crew stationed in the village. Quests involved things
like killing an alligator in order to help native women who were
collecting plants and herbs, and panning for gold.

We also embarked on a bit of cave exploration, in search of jade -
the usual array of giant spiders and the like had to be dispatched. Even
the natives of the Shaganumbi tribe we encountered tended to indulge in
pretty humorous dialogue, and once we had gained the trust of the
Shaganumbi, we were able to learn voodoo. Although, at some point in the
game, you will have to decide whether to align yourself with the
natives (thereby acquiring voodoo skills) or the Inquisition (which
brings vastly improved firearms skills).

We found Risen 2 deeply enjoyable: structurally, it's a conventional
RPG, but it felt like a particularly well designed one. It's also
pleasantly amusing, and the pirate subject matter is great - who didn't
dream of being a pirate when they were a kid. There was one major
question-mark, though: the code we played wasn't exactly the slickest,
with notable jerkiness and juddering of animations and movement.

Deep Silver assured us that a newer build already exists which is much
smoother, and that between now and late April, when the game is
scheduled to arrive, Piranha Bytes will work exclusively on polish and
slickness, having finished all other aspects of Risen 2. We sincerely
hope that the final game, on the consoles (on the PC, jerkiness isn't an
issue) overcomes that problem, as it's undoubtedly great fun to play
and should generate a cult following among lovers of conventional yet
quirky RPGs.